The present invention relates to thermally assisted magnetic recording head inspection methods and apparatuses for inspecting a thin-film thermally assisted magnetic recording head as well as methods for manufacturing a thermally assisted magnetic recording head, and more particularly, a thermally assisted magnetic recording head inspection method and an apparatus of the same which can inspect the state of evanescent light generated by a thin-film thermally assisted magnetic recording head, which can not be inspected with use of a technique using an optical microscope or the like, and a method of manufacturing such a thermally assisted magnetic recording head.
As a next-generation hard disc drive head, it is planned by many hard disc manufacturers to employ a thermally assisted magnetic recording head. The width of evanescent light generated by the thermally assisted magnetic recording head is not larger than 20 nm and the width determines the width of a write track in the hard disc. Methods for inspecting an intensity distribution of the evanescent light in actual operation and the physical shape of the portion of light emission are unsolved yet important problems. Currently, it is possible to measure the shape of a head (element) using a scanning electron microscope (SEM); but it is a destructive inspection and it is difficult to apply to a total inspection for mass production.
Meanwhile, the conventional track width inspection of a magnetic head for hard disc use has been carried out in a final step of magnetic head manufacture called HGA (Head Gimbal Assembly) state or pseudo HGA state. In order to meet such demands as improvement in a production cost or early stage feedback of manufacturing process conditions, a method for inspecting magnetic recording heads in the form of a rowbar cut from a wafer is disclosed in JP-A-2009-230845.